Shopping Mall Set For At&t`s Skokie Site

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. said Thursday it will sell its massive industrial complex in Skokie and Niles to a developer who plans to turn it into a shopping center.

Trammell Crow Co. signed a contract to buy the former Teletype Corp. plant, a 61.8-acre property at 5555 W. Touhy, Skokie, comprising 300,000 square feet of offices and 1 million square feet of industrial space.

The price wasn`t disclosed. AT&T had asked $26 million for the 28-year-old property, which houses its computer division offices and laboratories.

A spokesman for Itasca-based Crow said the company will submit development plans and a rezoning request to Skokie officials in early November. He declined to give details about the project, saying plans have not been finished.

The shopping center would be built by a joint venture of Crow and Taxman Corp., a Skokie retail developer. Bennett & Kahnweiler Inc., Rosemont, represented AT&T in sales negotiations.

The deal, one of the Chicago area`s biggest industrial real estate transactions this year, is expected to close in early 1988, the spokesman said.

About 700 people employed in AT&T`s product development group will remain in the property under a sales-leaseback agreement with Crow, giving AT&T time to find them new quarters.

No deadline has been set for vacating the property, an AT&T spokeswoman said. AT&T, which at one time employed 4,000 in Skokie, had said it wanted to move its remaining employees there to western Du Page County in the second half of 1988.

All of the property is in Skokie except for the westernmost section of a 3,000-car parking lot, which extends into Niles. Both municipalities approved a tax increment financing district for the complex last December.

This will allow the sale of tax-exempt bonds to help underwrite development costs. The Crow spokeswoman said it was too early to say whether the firm would seek such financial assistance.